Child Support Warrants and the Criminalization of Low-Income Americans

Commentary:
By Adam Gettinger-Brizuela
MA, CATC-IV

How sad is it that Mr. Walter Scott was shot down and killed because he ran – and that he ran because there was a warrant for him for back child support?

According to the law throughout the United States, it is premature to say that Mr. Walter Scott was “murdered” by a police officer this week in Charleston, South Carolina. A proper newspaper term at this stage may be “slain.” OK, Mr. Scott was slain before our eyes by a uniformed public servant under the color of authority, allegedly because he refused commands to stay put and to stop. What is particularly disturbing to me, as a long-time fathers’ inclusion advocate, is that it is becoming increasingly evident that Mr. Scott initially fled the scene of the traffic stop because he concluded that Officer Slager was about to become aware that he was a wanted man.

Walter Scott was wanted, but he was not a murderer. He was not a rapist, a child molester, a robber or a drug addict. He was not a criminal at all, but he lived in fear of the law because he had not been able to pay child support payments for a long time.

He knew that a bench warrant had been issued for him. It is strongly suggestive that Mr. Scott was no criminal since the warrant had been issued in January of 2013. Two-and-a-half years later, this was his first contact with the police. It was apparently his tragically bad luck that the car he was driving had a broken taillight.

At this writing, this entire crime – and it was a crime, there is no question about that – is still under investigation at many levels. There is the damning video. The perpetrator was fired, arrested and charged with murder.

The child support system in the United States is based on an antiquated, discriminatory and thoroughly discredited, criminal justice model. For many decades, non-custodial parents (usually fathers) have been ordered to pay child support, and treated very much like parolees or probationers. For those who could afford attorneys, the support payments were much more often kept reasonable.

For those who could neither afford attorneys to represent them, nor pay what have often been exorbitant monthly child support payments, harassment quickly escalated to criminalization. Employers were informed, drivers’ licenses were suspended, car registrations were cancelled and, finally, warrants were issued. Without jobs and hunted by the police, many otherwise law-abiding non-custodial fathers have no doubt been pushed into the marginal economy, or worse. For those who do turn to shady dealings or drugs to survive, getting caught and eventually imprisoned are virtual certainties. While they are in prison, their child support payments continue to accrue, along with fines, service charges and interest.

So now the system has created men who are poor, angry, hungry, jobless, criminalized and institutionalized, and with no place for them in society except back to prison. These are the modern equivalents of the “debtor’s prisons” of past centuries, and just as cruel and ineffective. Not only do these men suffer, terribly, but their children are also badly damaged by the absence of their fathers and the knowledge that they are locked up. No child deserves that and no family gets “used” to it. A social propaganda war against “Deadbeat Dads,” which is based on racist fallacies, further increases the stigma on fathers and kids.

No one is suggesting that men, all parents, should not do everything they can to support their children, financially, emotionally, spiritually, in every way. Families are resilient, love is a force unto its own, and fathers find many ways to support their kids besides with money. Of course money is important too. If we spent less on locking men up and more on helping them secure and hold jobs, that dynamic could change, too. Child support in general is important. Its enforcement is a much more complex issue than could have possibly been addressed here. The fact remains that the child support system is weakened by the racism and class prejudice at its foundation.

The main point of this is that perhaps Mr. Scott, in death, can send a message to the people who have the power to decriminalize child support enforcement and reform law enforcement.

If, in fact, Walter Scott bolted from that car because the state of South Carolina was hunting him for $18,000 in back child support, then we have one man dead and another who will rot in prison, for nothing. And now Mr. Scott is dead and his children have no father to ever support them in any way again.

What a tragic waste.

Adam Gettinger-Brizuela, a consultant with POP-CATS, LLC, is a nationally-recognized authority on father inclusion and the honoring and valuation of fathers of color.